


i like you so much better when you're naked

by rillrill



Category: Veep
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Workplace Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She senses that Dan is more than the perceived sum of his parts – more than a stab-you-in-the-back smile and a series of five-year plans and an industrial fucking vat of hair gel – and she keeps him close because it’d be a stupid move not to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i like you so much better when you're naked

**Author's Note:**

> "Not even then?" "No. Not even then." Hahahahaaaaa oh god my OTP. This fic has everything: backstory, liberal drinking, desk sex, and two idiots who aren't good with basic empathy. (Title is from the song of the same name by Ida Maria, which I contend is their theme song.)

The thing is, Dan’s not sure when he went from constantly having the upper hand on Amy to being – okay, basically being her bitch. Career-wise. Not, you know, otherwise.

Okay, sometimes otherwise. Whatever. Shut up.

 

*

 

This is how it started.

 _They met in Baltimore._ False. There was a fundraiser for Governor Meyer’s reelection campaign, and Amy had been too tightly wound to speak to anyone but the people who mattered. She spent the night dodging ruddy-faced men in shiny suits and women with increasingly impractical hair-helmets, shaking hands and talking in low tones and clutching the same glass of pinot grigio, not allowing herself to take more than a few sips. She’d been promoted from intern to advisor only five weeks before and this was a big deal for her, five weeks out of grad school and she’d hooked her little trailer to a goddamn rocket ship. This was a big deal. There were talks going on about a possible presidential run for the Governor, in three or maybe seven years, who knew, but things were happening and she intended to hold on as long as she could, so she clutched that single glass of wine and shook hands and acted important as fuck and definitely didn’t notice the guy at the bar, hitting on Rep. Davis’ college-aged daughter.

 _They met in New York._ Also false. Dan assumes they may well have crossed paths there. He spent most of his time in the city when he was working for the Governor, anyway; 80% of his job had him out in the field (or, really, having late drinks with lobbyists in sketchy bars and picking up the tab with taxpayer money). He’s pretty sure he remembers having a drink with a Maryland state rep, and he’s pretty sure he remembers getting the evil eye from a blonde assistant, intern, secretary, whatever, as he hopped into a cab afterward, but his memory of that period of time is necessarily fuzzy (in the case that he’d ever be called before a jury, he made sure to remember nothing) and blondes in politics are a dime a dozen. 

_They met in DC._ True.

They met in DC, at some stupid formal party in a ballroom far too small for the number of people it held, fuck the fire codes or whatever, and Amy only briefly looked up from her email as they shook hands (her grip, so much stronger than he expected) and a few quick words were exchanged before she was charging off again and he was back on the move as well.

 

*

 

Dan’s halfway through a pint of Guinness in DC’s most generically Irish pub when a guy who he recognizes, but doesn’t know, slides onto the seat beside him and says conspiratorially, “Meyer just announced. She’s running.”

He raises his eyebrows and nods, frantically trying to remember the guy’s name. Kevin? It can’t be Kevin. “Huh,” he says. Twenty bad jokes race through his head, all having to do with women drivers and motorcades, but he decides to hold back until he figures out who the fucking hell this guy is and where they know each other from. “Interesting move. I wouldn’t have announced on a Friday. Is she _hoping_ it’ll get buried?” 

Not-Kevin shrugs. “Who fucking knows?”

“That campaign is already a comm nightmare.” He takes another swig and goddamnit he kind of hates dark beer. “Got an in there?”

“Friend of a friend dated her assistant chief of staff,” Not-Kevin says. “I could hook you up.”

Dan makes a noncommittal expression, sort of a facial question mark, if anything. “Sure.”

 

*

 

Amy is only halfway through this date and she’s pretty sure she hates this guy, some dickhead lobbyist from Albany trying to climb the DC ladder, but whatever, she’s had three glasses of wine already and she’ll probably give him a halfhearted handjob in a couple hours, because that’s the kind of day it’s been.

“Why haven’t we met before?” he asks, a little flirtatious, smirky and cocky. “I mean, come on, neither of us is exactly an ingenue.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” She moves her hand to the stem of her wine glass but doesn’t take ahold of it just yet.

“Depends. Are you insulted?”

“Hardly.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Then I’m not working hard enough.”

She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again.

When he brings up the topic of prospective openings on the campaign, she pretends to listen attentively while checking her email under the table. She maybe makes one of those open-ended promises that doesn’t mean anything, you know, the kind she makes seventeen times a cocksucking day, and he kind of fake-laughs a few seconds too long and she can’t stop staring at his veneers, goddamn, they are so white, it’s kind of creepy. 

They go out one more time and then he forgets to call her back after they sleep together (boozily, but it’s not _bad_ , she doesn’t get off or anything but whatever, that’s life) and the campaign personnel director just happens to lose his resume, boo hoo.

 

*

 

Washington is hot and sticky. It’s one of those summers that won’t end – mid-September and the heat is still oppressive and humid. Walking outside feels like stepping into a mouth. Dan has been with Selina’s administration for two months and Amy still kind of wants to murder him every few days. But they gravitate toward each other, for some reason, not because they actually like each other but because when they put aside their egos, they work well together. He’s smooth and almost disgustingly charming where she’s tightly-wound and a little antsy, but she can sense that this is a calculated move, a persona he puts on to keep everyone else just a little off-balance.

If anyone knows what ambition and calculation looks like, it’s Amy fucking Brookheimer, because she’s built everything she has out of an unceasing urge to work hard and network and make a name for herself out of little more than connections. She’s all of thirty-one and pulling the strings for the second most powerful person in the world, that’s got to mean something. She senses that Dan is more than the perceived sum of his parts – more than a stab-you-in-the-back smile and a series of five-year plans and an industrial fucking vat of hair gel – and she keeps him close, because in a way, she can tell it’d be a stupid move not to. Keeping her enemies closer and all that.

She is not going to sleep with him. Oh, good god, no.

 

*

 

There’s one time, okay, where they’ve been working way too late, doing damage control for who-fucking-cares-what, and everyone’s gone, even Sue went home ages ago but Amy’s still taking phone calls and typing out memos, sometimes both at the same time, and Dan smirks a little and makes a comment about multitasking, eyebrow wiggle, and she responds with a half-baked pun involving the words “poll” and “pole,” and licks her lips suggestively, and then he pushes her up against Sue’s desk and is breathing hot and low into her ear.

“Tell me you want it,” he murmurs, using his knee to part her legs as far as her dull grey skirt will allow, and as she whines into his neck and attempts to grind down against his knee, he tries not to let himself smile. 

“I – fucking – _fuck_ ,” she mutters as he bites at her bottom lip, and then reaches a hand down to palm his dick through his suit pants, .

Her phone vibrates again as he nudges her panties to the side and pushes in two fingers, a little rough, but she moans. “Take the call,” he says roughly, and her voice is shaky as she answers: “Amy Brookheimer.”

He can feel her clenching around him as he thrusts his fingers into her, and as she hangs up, she immediately bites out a series of fucks and shits and _Jesus Christ Dans_. He draws it out, plays her like his guitar, and when she comes she manages not to say a word. She finishes him with her mouth, on her knees like a college girl, and swallows, accomplished, like she’s done something productive. She kisses him again (so dirty, but so good) before hopping to her feet and sighing. “Fuck.”

 

*

 

But they don’t talk about that.

 

*

 

Eight months later, then.

Dan is not a weak person. He’s fucked himself over a few more times than has been necessary or even healthy, maybe. He’s feeling a little old for his age, and the retinol in his moisturizer hasn’t been working as well since this bullshit with the Macaulay Amendment became a constant thorn in his side and reminder that his career may well be over in the amount of time it takes Furlong to finish his morning doughnut (seventeen point three seconds, he’s timed it).

But he’s a grown man, and he’s not going to hide. Not for long.

 

*

 

This year is just a fucking shitshow.

In Finland, he becomes a national joke. In DC, his career is facing the same fate. In this restaurant, he’s sitting next to Jonah, getting progressively more drunk on vodka-tonics and watching Amy ignore this stretched-out praying mantis of a nerd from Boston who keeps trying to make conversation with her. 

He’s pretty fucking wasted by the time everyone decamps from the table to rush the veep to her car and he drops his own phone almost immediately. Amy hisses in his ear as he bends down to retrieve it: “You need to leave separately, like now.”

He sneers. “I’m good. Get me a car.”

“Call yourself a cab.” She’s already halfway across the room, taking a phone from a rubbernecker’s hand.

So he splits a cab with Jonah and they talk shit about Webster and Andrew until they realize how fucking weird it is.

He wakes up with a raging hangover and thirty-three emails marked urgent.

 

*

 

This could ruin their careers if it came out. Amy is totally aware of that. At the very least, her career would be fucked. She’s technically sleeping with a subordinate, one whose career is already under scrutiny, and she’s already basically the media’s favorite whipping girl for all of the veep’s missteps. All it’d take is one nosy staffer, one prying journalist, one tipster emailing Politico or Wonkette and she’s completely fucked. She is _aware_ of this, okay, and she has the situation under control. “So shut up,” she mumbles as Dan kisses down her neck, nimble fingers working at the buttons of her blouse while he simultaneously sucks on her collarbone. 

“Mmmfffffh,” he replies ineloquently, grabbing at the cups of her bra (which is beige and sensible but at least it clips in the front). She rolls her eyes. “Fucker.”

The rule is that they don’t talk work in her apartment, and she pushes his head down just to get him to shut up and pulls his hair hard just to hear him gasp. 

When he’s lying, spent, beneath her – still softening inside her, breathing like he’s just run a 5K despite having done very little work – his phone vibrates on the table beside them, and Amy gets a wicked look in those saucer-like eyes. She reaches over, still atop him, before he can move and snatches it, then places it, slowly, in his right hand. 

“Take the call.”

He swallows. She smirks. He hits “answer.”

“Dan Egan.”

 

*

 

So this is how it is.

They are what they are. Everyone is hooking up with someone. If it has to be a secret, they can make that work. If it has to be feverish hate-fucking in Amy’s apartment (which has dry cleaning hangers on every doorknob and a thick layer of dust on every surface that isn’t the bed, but she’ll be double-teamed by Kent Davison and Big Bird before she’s caught doing the walk of shame from Dan’s place), preceded by some sort of horrendous work-related fuck-up and followed by her awkwardly prompting him to leave on the basis of it being an early day the next day – they can make that work as well.

Or whatever. She might strangle him the next day. It is what it is, really.


End file.
